Reviews

What got me into the theater for this one was seeing the trailer. I initially had no idea the lead character was played by Katie Holmes. I have not seen much of her and what I've seen I haven't much liked, including the ridiculous "Dawson's Creek," the success of which positively amazed me.

"Pieces of April" is a low budget indie shot on digital video. Part farce, part made-for-TV holiday movie on how a disfunctional family comes together, this picture works well, despite a rather unbelievable ending. But its success is that you want to believe in the ending, so you do. If only real life were so simple that people who have been at war for years could solve their problems with a good turkey stuffing.

Hats off to writer/director Peter Hedges who did very good job with an obviously limited budget. He also milked about all you can get from a very compact storyline which centers around a formerly drugged out punk girl who decides to cook a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for her estranged family because her mother is dying of cancer.

Full marks to Patricia Clarkson who is good as the mother and Oliver Platt, good, but a little miscast as the father. But this is Katie Holmes movie and she got the ball and ran with it.

While the whole premise might not hold up well under heavy scrutiny, Holmes turns in an excellent performance as the punk daughter facing the very middle class anxiety of having the whole family over for a holiday meal and not having a clue as to how to prepare it.

And while this picture may also be a little too much into "diversity" with good black people and good Asian people and not really many good white folk (all the real villains are white, from Katie's sister to her drug dealing ex-boyfriend), it does make a rather interesting statement. Maybe the people you gather around you should be the people who treat you well. Blood ties are not always the ones that bind.

Anyway, Holmes shines and I will now look forward to her next film with interest. Keep up playing in good indies, Katie, you have a real knack for it.

This is an idea whose time hadn't yet come and quite possibly, never will. It seems to be a sort of blending of "West Side Story," various Hong Kong kung fu movies and the old Universal horror classics of the thirties and forties. But it doesn't jell into anything at all.

The film is apparently set in modern times and centers around a blood feud between vampires and werewolves, or lychin as they are called here. Not much point in saying more, because there really isn't more, despite what could have been an interesting idea. Instead, the storyline just seems to be one endless set up for an endless string of chases through dark, narrow tunnels or dark narrow streets. But the odd thing is that both clans seem to rely on good old fashioned gunfire rather than sucking blood or ripping each others throats out, making the fact that they are supernatural beings almost irrelevant.

It's as if the filmmakers wanted to make a horror movie, but kind of wanted a martial arts movie, too, and yet, just to hedge their bets, decided to make it a gang movie from the hood. So they wound up with nothing, just a sort of low budget Matrix that neither frightens you nor makes you sit up in awe over the special effects.

If the special effects from martial arts films aren't there and the old fashion thrills and chills we expect from vampire movies aren't there, what is there? The characterizations you might think would spring from some writer's mind if he were going to turn vampires into a centuries old clan complete with mansions and intrigues and waring factions within factions? Nope. Again, they sort of tried, but not very hard and came away with next to nothing, no characterizations, no interesting sets or costumes or customs.

Lastly, one has to look at the acting. Scott Speedman, late of "Felicity," plays a human caught in the middle of this horror show ripped from Universal studios one sheets of the thirties. And since the movie is painfully underwritten, he is given almost nothing to do, something that only emphasizes his rather dower personality.

The real shame, though, is Kate Beckinsale. This was a vehicle for her and perhaps designed to make her into some kind of rival for Angelina Jolie, who rose above "Lara Croft" making it into at least a little something. But Beckinsale complete misfires here, just as she did in "Pearl Harbor." She's proved before she can handle dramatic material and recently was quite good in "Laurel Canyon." And perhaps her best performance to date in an American film was in "Last Days of Disco." But here she spends an entire movie wearing the exact same expression, something of a cross between annoyed and perplexed, as if she's trying to figure out how she got herself into such a stinker.

Not a good effort from Kate, or the people who put this one together.

Don't bother.

While some film critics disagreed in the late fifties, giving the nod to Murnau's equally brilliant "Last Laugh," this in my view is the crowning achievement of the German genius. Many polls rank it as the greatest silent film ever made and many rank it very high on the all time list of great movies.

The plot is melodramatic, the acting in places heavy handed, and the action seemingly non-existent, at least in the eyes of the "Terminator 3" generation,yet "Sunrise" is so captivating a film that it can be watched over and over again and deliver the same punch every time. In fact, like the other greats,including "Citizen Kane," you can probably get something new out of "Sunrise" every time you watch it, no matter how many times you watch.

Murnau takes barren sets and dark, hallow rooms and turns them into treasure troves of lighting and nuance. He creates something as simple as a railway depot or a big traffic intersection and makes it a story all by itself.

"Sunrise" stands today as one of the most visually fascinating films ever made. Murnau's cinematographers, Charles Rosher and Karl Struss, got an Oscar for their work and surely deserved it. Janet Gaynor won the Best Actress award for her body of work that also included "Seventh Heaven" and also richly deserved the prize. Her face expresses her inner emotions so perfectly that some of her scenes are achingly beautiful.

And the film itself received an academy award for "Most unique and artistic production," an award never given out again, maybe because no picture could live up to the standard set by "Sunrise."

The new DVD version being marketed on the quiet by Fox is marvelous, with a wonderfully restored print that seems just as bright today as it must have in late 1927 when the film was released. The DVD includes an interesting commentary option by cinematographer John Baily and no film is better suited for this, since it tells its story brilliantly with pictures alone, so the commentary option is not a distraction.

One of the great tragedies of the cinema in my view is that few people alive today have seen "Sunrise." They have no idea what they are missing.

This one ranks among the five best films ever made.

...Douglas Fairbanks brought grace and poetry to physical action on the movie screen. Fairbanks essentially invented the action/adventure movie genre, known in his day as swashbucklers.

"Thief of Bagdad" was made in 1924 when Fairbanks was half way through the heyday of that part of his career. He already had "Zorro" "The Three Musketeers" and "Robin Hood" behind him. "Thief" was something of a departure, however, for it depended less on Fairbanks ability to dance his way though physical stunts than it did on the Arabian Nights tableau it presented on the screen. And frankly, nothing like it has every been done since. Only Griffth's "Intolerance" created the same kind of feel, and it was gritty and warlike, where as "Thief" was a sort of wondrous dream about what it would be like to live by your wits, go off and slay dragons and eventually, win the hand of a princess by saving her father's kingdom.

Fairbanks was over 40 when he made this film and yet seems so perfectly suited for it that we forget his age. He is the embodiment of the dashing hero.

But what almost overshadows him are the sets themselves. Designed by William Cameron Menzies, they are beyond spectacular. Almost every frame of this film is a work of art and of course, the amazing thing is, this was not done through computer animation. So skillful are the designs and the camerawork, that it is almost impossible to tell where the sets stop and the matt paintings begin.

Credit for all this must also go to Fairbanks,who wrote the script and produced the film. Raoul Walsh's direction is also great, although the film is a little long in some spots and would be aided by some skillful editing.

Fairbanks acting style seems today very much of the silent era, yet at the same time, there is always the feel of joyous celebration to it. He was always something of the happy rogue or perhaps, a guy who realized he was getting to make a living by playing in the world's most wonderful sandbox. He was blessed with good fortune and he knew it.

Of the others, Julanne Johnston, who plays the princess, probably comes off the worst of the main characters. She is beautiful,but comes off as little more than window dressing. But cudos to the incredible Anna May Wong who plays the treacherous Mongol slave girl. Wong's great beauty and strong screen presence allow her to steal almost every scene she is in. That Wong never got the chance to play many lead roles is one of the great tragedies of Hollywood history.

This film is today memorable only for those interested in the struggles the studios went through during the conversion to sound, and those interested in the fortunes of two of Hollywood's most fascinating characters, William Powell, and Louise Brooks.

Powell is cast as Philo Vance and plays him in a straight, deadpan manner. It's interesting because he has almost none of the charm and sophistication that he would bring just a few years later to the Nick Charles character that would become such a major hit.

On the other hand, this is the film that sunk the Hollywood career of Louise Brooks. She had just completed the silent version of this film when her Paramount contract came up for renewal. She was owned a $250 bump in salary, which would have boosted her all the way to $1,000 a week. But B.P. Schulberg refused to honor the deal, saying he didn't know how she would record. Of course, Brooks walked out on the film, went to Europe and made film history, although it would be 30 years before anyone realized it. But eventually, the restored version of "Pandora's Box" would turn her into a screen legend and perhaps, the greatest femme fatale in movie history. But the film pretty much flopped at the time, mostly because it was carved up by the censors.

Meanwhile, Paramount decided to do some reshoots to get some sound into "Canary", but could not lure Brooks back to Hollywood for love or money. So Margaret Livingston was brought in and dubbed Brooks' voice, unfortunately using a Brooklyn accent that sounded nothing at all like Brooks. (For a real example of her voice, check out "Windy Riley Goes Hollywood," a terrible 1929 short that was actually directed by Fatty Arbuckle under an assumed name. She has a low, sexy voice, despite Paramount's contention that she "didn't record." It's now available on DVD as added material for Brooks' other German triumph, "Diary of a Lost Girl," directed by G.W.Pabst.)

At any rate, Canary is slow moving and dull to the extreme. After Brooks' character is knocked off, the film goes straight downhill and is almost impossible to watch. But the first part is fascinating, if only because Brooks is so damned beautiful that she takes your breath away.

I went to see "The Italian Job" on the recommendations of people I know. I no longer consider these people to be my friends.

This film stars Charlize Theron and three Mini-Coopers. Seth Green is good in a supporting role. Donald Sutherland is fine in a cameo. Also in the cast is Edward Norton, who delivers an undistinguished performance as the bad guy, and Mark Walberg. He is nominally the star, or at least, he gets top billing. He plays the head of the heist mob. Unfortunately for Mr. Walberg, every one of the members of his mob has a life and a personality, except him. His character is so underwritten that it would take a James Cagney or a Cary Grant to bring it to life. Not being blessed with their personalities, Mr. Walberg simply soldiers on along reciting his lines competently, but having virtually no impact on the screen. Had he dropped out half way through the picture, you would not have missed him. But again, he was given precious little to work with.

The story is a remake of a 1969 Michael Caine film about a complex heist in Venus, Italy, and after the crooks have their booty stolen from them, and even more complex heist in Los Angeles to get the swag back. Not much more needs to be said. We have all seen it before. The whole film is in reality one long build up to another big car chase, this one involving the Mini-Coopers and taking place in the tunnels of the LA subway system, which we are informed is after all, under utilized.

Forget that not a single one of the male characters is in any way believable. They really don't matter. This is a movie for people who want to kill a couple of hours and nothing more. Actually, Miss Theron's personalty throughout most of the film is probably the strongest of the lot and she does a pretty good job with her role.

She's worth seeing. So are the Minis. Are they worth $8.50 even at matinee prices?

Not really. Well, maybe Charlize is. I can see the Minis at a showroom any time I want.

Lisa Cholodenko's first film, 1998's "High Art," was a fascinating look at ambition and what some people will do to satisfy their need to get to the top. That made it a highly relevant film, especially for Americans.

This second feature is no where as powerful as her debut film and doesn't seem to say nearly as much, except maybe that even orderly lifes can encounter bumps along the way, and that the disorderly, the irresponsible and the drug addicted have morals, too, or at least, there are lines even they won't cross.

The film tells the tale of a young doctor who flies to LA with his fiancee to begin a residency in a hospital there. They intend to stay at his mother's Laurel Canyon home, only to discover that Mom, who is supposed to be in Malibu, is using the house and its home recording studio to produce a record for a rock band. Mom, it seems, is a highly successful record producer with a string of lovers both male and female that would apparently put Mick Jagger to shame. And like the Mick, she's also rarely without some controlled substance in hand.

Mom and her-son-the-doctor only tolerate each other and from the moment he and his girlfriend move in, doc is on the lookout for other digs. The girlfriend, a slightly up tight Ph.d. candidate working on her thesis, surprisingly enough immediately fits in with Mom and her rock band friends. She finds herself lured to the recording studio a lot more often than she is lured to her laptop to write about the mating habits of the fruit fly. Meanwhile, her boy friend finds himself attracted to a sexy second year intern who virtually throws herself at him.

That's essentially the story, and it is a very well acted and well directed one. Frances McDormand is very good as the mom. Christian Bale is Ok, although nothing special, as her son. Kate Beckinsale is excellent(and marvelous to look at) as the girlfriend and Allesandro Nivola is very good as the leader of the band.

So what are my gripes about this film? The big one is that it is a character study and nothing more, but unfortunately, its thin in the character building department. This film runs just 101 minutes and when it ended, I was quite surprised that it was over. That gave me the feeling that it suffered from a thin budget and that the director may have rung everything she could out of the bucks she had to work with. That's too bad, because another 10 to 15 minutes could have made all the difference in the world with this movie, lifting it from a good film to a very good film.

I just never quite got what the doc's gripe was with his mom, since she'd apparently nurtured him enough to get him through Harvard medical school, something most "abandoned kids" don't really accomplish. I also never got a clear picture of what Mom was after in life, save another hit record and a few more years of good sex with her current squeeze. Actually, maybe that was all that was on her mind, but she should have had some bigger goals to up the stakes a little.

The film's strength was that it was populated by people we don't meet everyday, from McDormand's quiet lioness of a mom, to Nivola's hedonistic, yet highly intelligent young rock singer. Even Beckinsale's character, a somewhat repressed intellectual who finds herself tempted to try a little hedonism herself, seemed different and intriguing.

But I needed a lot more back story or front story or something, because in the end, the infidelity that was supposed to be the big risk in this picture, really came off as a chance for nothing more than a little voyerism on the audience's part. I never really knew if Bale and Beckinsale were right for each other in the first place, so it never really mattered to me if one or the other of them strayed, or even moved on to other partners.

In the end, the story sort of sinks because of that, but survives anyway on the strength of the acting of McDormand, Beckinsale and Nivola, with Bale coming in a distant fourth in my view. Anyway, I give it a qualified thumbs up and hope Lisa Cholodenko can find a bigger budget to work with next time around.

The puzzle is, why did this film go directly to video and why isn't it a better film?

Fineline apparently relegated this to the video bins because of a crowded release schedule, but more likely because it had just one American star in it, Jessica Alba, and her TV series, "Dark Angel," had been canceled, meaning she no longer brought any "heat" to the project.

That's a shame, because this film is light years better than most direct to video releases.

While the plot is quite complicated, it is basically about a young Englishman, played by Hugh Dancey, who goes out to Sawawak (Borneo) in the mid-thirties to follow in his father's footsteps and bring the benefits of a good English education to the natives and headhunters of the region.

He needs to pick up the language, though, and thus is assigned a "sleeping dictionary" a fetching young local woman who will teach him the native lingo, while giving him an education in bed at the same time. While that may sound as contrived a plot as you could find, it is probably grounded in fact, and certainly grounded in solid, British upper class hypocrisy of that day, which, taking into account the fact that he'll be there for three years, sees no reason why he can't avail himself of the local talent to satisfy his sexual needs. In fact, when he initially rejects the beautiful Jessica Alba, they offer him a young man, he being the product of British boys schools and all that.

After a very brief period of conflict, Dancey and Alba fall head over heels for each other, decide they want to marry, and find themselves in hot water from that point on. The film goes on to rightfully bash British upper class racial prejudice, but never quite deals with the key issue facing Dancey's character. Does he ever catch on that the education he wanted to bring to the natives is the same education that says, one Englishman is worth a thousand natives?

Anyway, the film, written and directed by Guy Jenkin, is fairly well scripted, well directed and absolutely beautifully shot. Word is, it cost just $15 million, but it has the look of a much more expensive picture, definitely not some cut rate direct to video thriller. This is not some prison women in cages film shot in the Philippines.

There are some good characterizations here. Bob Hoskins starts out very strong as the cynical governor of this province, but then is very under utilized. Brenda Blethyn is fantasic as Hoskins wife, a manipulative upper class snob who is the real villain of the story.

But there are script problems here. Dancey and Alba fall in love far too quickly, skipping over a lot of character build up which would have made us care for them a lot more than we wind up doing. There is sympathy for them, though, because of the obvious class and racial biases in the British empire. But you get the feeling there are a lot of missed opportunities here.

Perhaps the biggest flaw the film has are its two stars, though. Dancey,pretty much unknown in America, seems only adequate to me. He brings no real passion to the role of the young idealist.

The real enigma, of course, is Jessica Alba. Although as beautiful as any young actress in Hollywood today, she has yet to prove that she can actually act, and with every successive missed opportunity, she is building up a body of work that says maybe she can't. Her first feature staring role was in a flic called "Paranoid," in which she was frankly just plain dreadful. She has had supporting roles in a couple of other films, but the pictures were so dreadful you couldn't hang much of the blame on her, except maybe in her choice of roles. Her big break came in the James Cameron produced TV series "Dark Angel," which got its wings clipped after two seasons. In it, Abla was forced to play a rather depressing character in a depressing show and she could not get deep enough into it to make it the kind of hit that Jennifer Garner became in "Alias."

In Sleeping Dictionary, Alba definitely looks like someone any man would want to sleep with, but other than that seems in many ways miscast completely. I read one review here that mistakenly places this movie in South America. I wonder if the producers made the same mistake. The days when any dark skinned actress can play any dark skinned character, from Latino to Asian to Arabic, appear to be over to me. Alba didn't seem like a resident of Borneo. She in many ways seemed like a wise ass girl from East Los Angeles.

Then there's the main problem, her delivery of lines. Alba is excellent when she keeps her mouth shut. No, really, she does reaction shots extremely well. Her emotions play out beautifully on her face. It's when she has to talk that she often finds herself in trouble. In this film, much of her delivery of her lines was just short of bad.

More importantly, it wasn't good and that makes this film another big missed chance for Jessica Alba. It's too bad, because she was in part hampered by an under developed character, which may have been hampered by a restricted budget. Ten more minutes showing us who the main characters really were might have made all the difference in this film. But Alba still would have had to be good enough to handle the added material and I still don't know if she is.

She supposedly has another film in the works in which she plays some kind of hiphop dancer. Hopefully, at least playing the right race, she'll shine. But she just misses the mark for me in "Sleeping Dictionary" as she has missed it in everything she's done since "Flipper."

I went into this film with low expectations, since I simply hadn't heard much good about it. To my happy surprise, it exceeded my expectations in almost all categories.

Beautifully mounted and shot and swiftly directed, this is Scorsese's best period film to date, far exceeding the awkward "Age of Innocence."

As everyone notes, Daniel Day-Lewis turns in a very strong performance. Cameron Diaz is adequate in the female lead. Leo DiCaprio is once again woefully miscast as a tough street kid and the idea that he could rally the tough Irish of New York around him at the end of the movie is almost silly.

DiCaprio is the film's biggest downfall for me, and he leads directly to the problems with its plotting. The story here is that a kid from a tough neighborhood sets out to avenge his father's death. That's it. DiCaprio's character seems to have no other goal and thus comes off to me not only secretive and brooding, but largely uninteresting.

Central characters of films should have big goals, with the revenge motive thrown in for good measure. As it was, Bill the Butcher was a far more interesting character and the film should have centered on him, with DiCaprio telling Bill's story. As it turned out, Bill seemed real, Amsterdam seemed as contrived a character as his name implied.

A simply change in focus could have turned this good film into a great one.

"Chicago" has so much going for it, it almost seems wrong to criticize. But that's what this forum is for.

First, the music, the top criteria for a musical. The morning after you first saw "Cabaret," you probably woke up humming the tune. You wake up humming the top tunes from all the great movie and stage musicals. Not so with "Chicago." Although this work has been around since Bob Fosse staged it in 1975, none of the tunes from "Chicago" have become standards over the past quarter of a century. There's a reason for that. The music simply is NOT memorable.

What does stick in your mind from "Chicago" the movie, are camerawork, editing, staging, costume and production design, as well as the acting and directing. They are all very first class. I did, though, have my problems with both Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere. I am not a particular fan other either, and so I found their characters probably less than what they could be. Gere's mugging for the camera, especially during his musical numbers, rather bothered me.

But hats off to Catherine Zeta-Jones, who in my mind stole the picture whenever she was on screen. The film would have done well to feature more of her and less of Zellweger in my view.

But something else here needs to be addressed. That's camera work and editing. Although brilliant in both categories, they were also both disturbing, for they robbed the audience of the pleasure of sitting back and fully enjoying the musical numbers. Apparently convinced today's audiences don't have the attention span needed to watch a number play out, director Rob Marshall had his people move the camera in for the tight shot, rather than pulling back for the full view. The cutting, which takes place at a blistering pace, also districts. It's almost as if that's the intent, to possible cover up less than stellar work by the performers.

Ironically, a few days ago I looked once again at "Swing Time," perhaps the best of the Astaire and Rogers musicals of the 30s. That one was directed by George Stevens, not really known for his musical work and it showed. One of the films very best numbers is Astaire's solo performance in "Bojangles," done as a tribute to Harlem song and dance man Bill Robinson. Politically incorrect today because Astaire appears in black face, the number is nonetheless one of the best Harlem nightclub acts ever put on film. But the camera work is nothing to write home about. Stevens for the most part just puts his camera on a crane, pulls back for an elevated master shot and simply leaves it there. It doesn't matter. Astaire's dancing and the dancing of the chorus line he whips around in his own, effortless style, just captive.

Unfortunately, perhaps it takes performing talent like that to make that kind of unimaginative camerawork fly. Busby Berkeley did lots of tricks of his own in "42nd Street," and "Golddiggers of 1933" and of course, the movie makers who followed followed his lead.

But you still can't escape the feeling that cinematic slight of hand is used so often today to cover up flaws in the performances. But then, this is not the era of Astaire and Rogers, this is the era of Madonna, of manufactured boy bands and of girl singers who are carbon copies of one another.

Anyway, "Chicago", despite its flaws, is very much worth seeing and Catherine Zeta-Jones is pretty much worth the price of admission all by herself. In many ways,this is a very, very enjoyable movie, even if its camera and editing techniques tell us, "Hey, you wouldn't like this movie half as much if you had to sit and watch a whole dancer number."

Louise Brooks may have never studied acting, but every actor should study her. How much they can learn is questionable though. This dancer/chorus girl turned film star was one of those rare creatures who probably couldn't have told you what she was doing, even if she thought long and hard about it (and Brooks was an intelligent, articulate woman.)

Like a great natural athlete, she simply could do it, and do it better than almost anyone else. Pandora's Box is the greatest existing record of her technique and remarkable talents.

On the surface, a run of the mill story of a femme fatale who destroys the men around her, this G. W. Pabst film is complicated, dark, moody, and seemingly packed with contradictory messages. Well acted and well directed by Pabst, it nonetheless would have been forgotten decades ago, had it not been for its star.

Brooks was one of the most beautiful, most photogenic woman to ever appear on the screen. From some angles, her face is so remarkable it almost doesn't seem real.

Her personality exceeds her beauty and it was the perfect personality to capture the childish, petulant, self centered, yet sweetly innocent kid who is the embodiment of every pretty girl who wants what she wants, regardless of the consequences.

Pabst' film, based on two German stage plays, is also a fascinating look at male sexual obsession, at men unable to control their lust who want to destroy the object of that lust before she destroys them.

Yet all the messages aside, it is simply Brooks totally natural performance that in the end will be remembered here.

Ironically, Brooks was really no more than a starlet in her American silent film days and it took her three European films to elevate her name above the title. And those films were hardly seen in the U.S. in their day. Yet today, women whose names were household words in America in the silent era, like Coleen Moore and even Clara Bow, are all but forgotten, while the Brooks legend grows stronger each year.

While Brooks has benefitted from a well written biography and the adoration of much of the press, a close examination of Pandora's Box proves she was much more than just hype.

This movie is one of the great treasures of the cinema, and Louise Brooks is one of the most talented and most fascinating actresses to ever appear in movies, on either side of the Atlantic.

A long time ago, a critic reviewing a novel said that when a writer writes about a writer suffering from writer's block, you know everyone is in trouble. This picture fits that definition to a tee. This film is as pretentious a piece of navel gazing as every hit the screen.

Good direction and some terrific acting, especially on the part of Chris Cooper, can't make me feel any better about having waisted two hours of my time on this film.

Why anyone should have cared for a single one of the characters in this movie, I cannot imagine. Watching the spoiled, well connected in-crowd feeling sorry for themselves is not my idea of entertainment.

This was a virtual love song to the self obsessed "me generation," and a pretty good explanation of why most of the films they make are so quickly forgotten.

I'm sure this film will be forgotten soon, too.

This is an interesting movie, but less interesting perhaps than the reactions it draws.

First, the nuts and bolts review. Selma Hyack does a great job portraying the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, who marries, puts up with, and in some ways, maybe even excells famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. It's a tough role and Hyack seems to let it all hang out in many ways.

Alfred Molina is good, but not great as Rivera, and the rest of the supporting cast also performs well, including a cameo appearance by Ashley Judd as Italian born-photographer and leftwing activist Tina Modotti.

The direction is crisp and effective throughout, and the colors and ambiance of the film are simply great. This is a movie about artists and it fullfills the first requirement of art. It is visually stunning to look at.

What intrigues me is the heated debate this generates among those who know and admire Frida. It may well be impossible for anyone to make a bio picture that satisfies purists, those who are quite familiar with the subject matter. But purists have to realize that movies are too expensive and difficult to make (this one took decades)for the moviemakers to concentrate on such a small audience. They have to look at the big picture and make a film that is understandable to mass audiences, or else count on losing millions of dollars.

For myself, I knew next to nothing about Frida Kahlo, only that I had seen some of her paintings and that she was Rivera's wife. Since I like Rivera's work, I went to see the film. But I knew more about Tina Modotti when I walked into the theater than I did about Frida.

Whether this was an accurate portrayal of her character and life, I haven't a clue. But I do feel I came away knowing a lot more about her than I used to.

My single gripe is that the film seemed to make Frida take a back seat to her husband when it came to art. She is portrayed as someone who is very unsure about the value of her own work. But I can't get too mad about that, because Frida may have been that way in real life for all I know.

I am a leftist politically, but I think we often get much too caught up in politics and rhetoric and often assign political meanings to things when they don't apply. It is very, very complicated to make a biography and no 2 hour film is going to capture every facet of a complex person's personality, mucy less cover every aspect of their lives.

Overall,I'd say "Frida" accomplished its limited mission. It told me something about an artist I knew little about. I will now look for more of her work. I provided me with some fine acting, direction, etc. And perhaps best of all, allowed me to spend two hours in Mexican culture in some way, shape or form. I enjoyed the experience.

"The Quiet American" is going to make some Americans mad. Because of that, it probably won't get the recognition it deserves at Oscar time. But at this point in real time, with America poised to go to war against Iraq at the drop of a hate, this is a film every America should see.

Ostensibly, this second screen adaptation of the 1955 Graham Greene novel is a love triangle set in an exotic locale, Saigon in 1952 when Indochina was France's problem and America was supposedly nothing more than an interested observer.

In short, it's a story about a jaded, opium using British journalist who essentially has been doing as little work as possible, then suddenly finds that if he doesn't start filing some dispatches soon,he is going to be called home to London by his paper. That makes him unhappy, since he'll have to give up his fetching Vietnamese mistress. And to complicate things still further, an idealistic young American aid mission employee shows up, falls in love with the Englishman's girl on the spot, and poses a strong risk of taking her away from him.

But what's underneath all this is the behind the scenes political jockeying for control of Vietnam. It's a three sided fight between the French, the Communists and military free booters who are backed by the United States. Before long, it becomes clear that the "Quiet American" is really in Saigon to do a lot more than bring better eye care to the Vietnamese.

Directed by Australian veteran Philip Noyce, this is a beautifully shot, wonderfully paced film that rivets your attention on the screen almost from the first frame. A lot of that has to do with the acting of Michael Caine. He turns in a strong, if slightly understated performance as a man fighting to hold on to the only thing of value he has in life, a girl half his age.

Brendan Frazer is also good as the all American boy who seems so sincere in the beginning that he's too good to be true.

And Do Thi Hai Yen seems perfect as the girl caught between them. And the interesting thing about her character as filmed by Noyce is this. She is no angel. In fact, she in many ways seems to symbolize Vietnam itself. She's just trying to cut the best deal she can.

This film was shelved for a year because of 9-11. Now it's in theaters in limited release and hopefully will go wider soon. It's a movie with a lot to say and without giving too much away, I'll hint at the message. Americans, who have grown extremely skeptical about what their government tells them here at home, should not make the mistake of thinking it never lies about its activities overseas.

To me one of the great mysteries of 9-11 is how, in the year since the tragedy, the FBI and CIA, two much maligned agencies that had almost become the butt of jokes, could suddenly be looked upon as our best friends when they failed to prevent the attack in the first place.

This movie says there may be other attacks these agencies also failed to prevent, and not by accident, either.

The priceless "8 Femmes" is a satire on Agatha Christie murder mysteries, with music. Its "Gosford Park," as if Bob Fosse would have staged it.

There's no point in going into the plot, or the caliber of the acting. You have a screen filled with every great French actress save Moreau and Adjani.

You have three of four of them, Deneuve, Ledoyen, Beart and Hubbert, who could make something interesting out of reading the Paris telephone directory. Give them some very funny lines, and watch them just go to town.

My one reservation about this film was the musical aspects of it.

In general, I haven't liked a musical since "Gigi." Actually, I'm not sure there have been any musicals since "Gigi." But that's only because I can't remember what year "The Music Man" was made. It was simply marvelous.

I didn't much like "Moulin Rouge," not because of the concept, but because of the use of existing songs, all of which distracted me. I could have bought the movie had they written original songs.

So, when in the first number, three of the ladies jump up unexpectedly and do a French version of a song from "Grease" I almost fell out of my seat.

But the real show stopper was the sexy number done by Emmanuelle Beart. I would pay $9 dollars just to look at Beart for 90 minutes. Watching her singing a sexy song was almost more than I could take. It was nothing short of magical.

Finally, I have to say I heard more people in the audience laughing out loud in this movie than I have heard in any movie in a long time.

Forget every review you've seen. Run, don't walk, to see "8 Femmes." It the most fun you'll have at the movies this year.

It appears, from the scuttlebutt, that this series is now history after two seasons of relatively low ratings.

So, what happened to James Cameron's first TV effort?

It's hard to say, at least as far as its popularity goes. So much in television is so complex, including time slot, competition, etc., etc., that its difficult to know.

On paper, this had a lot going for it, including an unusual story line, at least for TV, a fetching star and first class production values.

I watched only sporadically the first season, finding the plot lines a little confusing. Things didn't really get much better in the second year, but there was some clear improvement, not with the plotting, but with the star.

This show had to live or die with Jessica Alba, its butt kicking, genetically enhanced super soldier who longed to be just a regular girl. The character was not unique. In fact, two rivals with the same longings are still on the air, Buffy and Sydney, in the form of Sarah Michelle Geller and Jennifer Garner, already a hit in "Alias."

Why didn't Jessica's Max capture our hearts, too? Alba, who was probably best known from her work in the "Flipper" TV series, is more beautiful than either of her rivals, but probably does not yet have their acting skills. In fact, she started off poorly, far more able to express emotions with her eyes than she could with her mouth. Her ability to handle dialogue was poor. (In her defense, so was some of the dialogue. But she grew into the role and began to be more believable in the second season.

The trouble may have been with the stories. "Dark Angel" only seemed to be going somewhere at the very end of its run, when Max and her mutant friends took a stand. Up until then, it was simply a vaguely depressing dystopia story which didn't really have much point.

In the end, it seemed to be saying the outsiders are people, too, but that may be a message that only resonates with outsiders and not mass audiences. It may also be a difficult message to put across when the star of the show, unlike her mutant friends, is drop dead beautiful. It's not too easy to feel sorry for a girl who is faster, stronger and better at everything, and oh yes, also looks like a movie star.

The show also suffered from too much deferred passion. Max and her true love Logan, played by Michael Weatherly, were being kept apart because of a virus. Okay, we know that TV plotters worry that once the boy and girl get together, things can go down hill from there. But watching Max and Logan NOT consummate their love in episode after episode simply got old.

The script writers needed to finally get them together and then figure out another plot twist to keep things interesting. Two full years was a very long courtship. You can't have a beautiful central character who does not at some point tear her clothes off and throw herself at the man she loves. That's not what movies are about.

Could this series be resurrected? Probably not. It was no doubt expensive to make and Alba's profile never rose to the place where there was much outside buzz about her. For some strange reason, the girl didn't seem to pop up all the time on TV talk shows or other places where her visibility would increase.

"Dark Angel" appears to have been laid to rest and perhaps justifiably so. Hopefully, Jessica Alba's career will go on,because she appears to have grown some as an actress. But next time, she needs to find a project with a little less darkness and a little more love in the picture.

This was billed as the directoral debut of Ilya Chalken and she generally acquits herself well in this low budget effort about the problems of child rearing when you are living on the margins of society.

The plot revolves around Zelda, a starving artist, played by Eleanor Hutchins, who is trying to raise a toddler in a chaos filled life in a Brooklyn slum. She co-habitates with Max, an apparently none too successful writer who spends very little time writing, and a lot of time out in the street, starting fist fights with almost anyone who looks the wrong way at him. He's sort of a Brendan Behan character, without the Irish wit or charm. Also living in the house is Natali, played by Holly Ramos, a recently rehabed druggie who almost killed herself with an overdose.

That essentially is the plot. It's mostly about a mom trying to cope with the requirements of motherhood when dad is largely disinterested in fatherhood.

The film hurts in part from a lack of subplot. Not much else seems to be going on here and the main story line could profit from something else big happening in this couple's lives, because then it would raise the stakes in the main story. It would make us care more whether Zelda takes her child and goes, or stays to work things out.

My big problem with this film may be political. I am admittedly a man, but this film to me looks at the problems it raises from a very slanted perspective. Since the film indicates Max wanted Zelda to have an abortion in the first place, I can only assume that either Baby Z was unplanned, or that Zelda intentionally got pregnant, no matter what Max wanted. But shouldn't Zelda have scoped Max out well enough to begin with to know he wasn't ever going to qualify for father of the year award? She certainly knows about his tendency toward violence. This isn't a guy who would be high up on most girl's lists of prospective mates.

It is also Zelda who brings a drug addict into the house; Zelda who sings her little girl to sleep, while guests are doing coke lines in the next room. (Did she ever consider telling her friends that doing drugs in her home was not acceptable?)

Zelda in her own way seems just as selfish as the man in her life.

All this sounds judgmental, of course, but don't forget, this is a judgmental movie, one in which a woman with no reliable source of income, no strong relationship, and a world filled with druggie friends, has decided to bring a child into the world, damn the consequences.

The message of this movie seems to be one which psychologists and marriage counsellors say they frequently hear from women. "If he loved me, he'd change." Maybe the message should have been: "Bringing a baby into this world is an awesome responsibility. Maybe I should think about this a little more thoroughly."

Years ago,I caught my first John Sayles movie.It was "Matwan." It was a riveting story about a coal miners strike in West Virginia in the early 1920s and it played to pretty small audiences, even for an art house film. But, despite some minor problems, it was a small masterpiece.

Since then, Sayles has proven himself to be one of the best directors in America when it comes to dealing with regional topics that in reality affect all of us.

Sayles has been more successful at some times than at others as he skips around the country, highlighting one region or another. "City of Hope," about a decaying New Jersey town, was rather hit and miss. "Lone Star," about life in a Texas border town, came closer to hitting its mark. But a film set in Alaska after that failed in my view. With "Sunshine State," Sayles is right on the money.

Sayles gives us the best look at Florida since Victor Nunez' "Ruby in Paradise" which was simply brilliant.

The story, reportedly shot on Amelia Island, Florida, is about the lives of numerous characters caught in a tug of war as two land development outfits try to move in on middle and lower middle class people trying to live their lives on an island off the Florida coast.

And the great thing is, the developers are not completely bad, and some of the locals actually want to sell out, and as fast as possible.

Edie Falco and Angela Bassett have the meatiest roles and both shine in them. But this is a real ensemble piece, and Tim Hutton, Gordon Jump, Ralph Waite and a slew of others,including Alan King playing Alan King, do excellent work as well.

This is a good Robert Altman movie about working class people with that special Sayles touch, meaning there are no cliches involved. Most of these characters don't want to be working class, they want to move up or at least out.

Don't miss this one. There won't be many this year that are this good.

"The Bourne Identity" is about as action packed, suspenseful a thriller as you are going to find and that's rather surprising, because the plot is not all that original, and not very difficult to figure out, even if you've never seen a movie like this before.

The plot has Matt Damon fished out of the ocean and finding that while he knows how to do all sorts of things, including speak a lot of languages (he's American?),he just can't remember his name or anything personal.

The rest of the tale is the unraveling of his past, which turns out to be all about his work as a CIA assassin.

Director Doug Liman does an excellent job with the almost non-stop action, which is expertly staged from start to finish. That includes a car chase through downtown Paris which puts to shame the one staged in "Ronin" by car chase expert John Frankinheimer. Liman's work is less precise in terms of the direction of actors, but then for the most part, they don't have all that much to do acting-wise.

Damon is fine as the man without a past. German actress Franke Potente (the redhead from "Run, Lola, Run") is even better as the girl who gets involved with him. She is actually given a little room to work and she does well, especially in a scene where she witnesses a brutal fight to the death, and finds she cannot just shrug it off as one more day in the office.

Some of the other casting falls a little flat, though. Chris Cooper, usually great, is somewhat miscast as the head of a CIA black ops group. The very talented Julia Stiles is given little to do as a Paris CIA operative(and looks much too young for the job) and Clive Owen, clearly British, sort of seems out of place as a CIA assassin.

But the action moves so fast that you hardly notice and overall,the picture succeeds very well,even though you pretty much know how its going to come out before the first reel is over.

I recommend the film highly.

But one final thought about it's timing. "The Bourne Identity" makes its debut as America continues to be caught up in the war on terrorism. That's interesting because this film is clearly about the CIA, which is depicted as a US government agency that assassinates foreign leaders, then blames the crimes on others; murders innocent civilians, and then lies to the American people when its leaders perjure themselves before Congress.

All this at a time when US intelligence agencies are arresting suspected terrorists and holding them incommunicado, at times saying it may not even grant them a trial. But we are told, trust these government agencies, we can believe them. They may have blown chance after chance to head off the 9-11 attacks, they may have muffed countless important cases in the past, they may have failed to predict any of the major events they had been looking out for since World War II, but don't worry, they've finally got it all right.

Sorry, the message in "The Bourne Identify" rings a lot truer than most of the pronouncements coming from real Washington officials about why we shouldn't mind that they are whittling away at the Bill of Rights. Robert Ludlum may be simply a novelist, but John Aschcroft is a failed politician(he was defeated in his bid for reelection to the Senate by a dead man) and Aschcroft is the one I don't trust.

This is a movie that only gets you about half way there.

Adrian Lyne has put together a stylish American version of a French film, but unfortunately left out the gritty realism that makes French films about love affairs so much better than American ones.

This movie does have a lot going for it. Fine acting, good direction, first class production values. But in the end, it falls victim to what sinks most American films these days, an under written script.

The film tells the tale of Connie Sumner, a well off East Coast housewife who is another one of those movie versions of the woman who "has it all" -- loving husband, nice kid and a very comfortable existence. (American movies, caught up in materialism, play on the fear factor, showing audiences how much they have to lose. "Don't let them take it away" is the number one theme.) But one fine day while on a shopping trip to Manhattan, she gets caught up in a movie wind storm second only to the one that sucked up Dorothy and she lands in the arms of Paul Martel,a French-born book dealer. They start a torrid love affair.

That's the story, or at least about 75 percent of it. With no subplot, the movie focuses on the affair and little else and while the couplings are fun to watch, it is a remarkably bland affair with few bumps along the way on the road to orgasmville.

That's the problem. We get way too little from this movie in terms of who, what, when, where and why. Diane Lane does a first class job as Connie, Richard Gere is also excellent as her husband, Edward. Oliver Martinez would seem to be just right as the sexy foreigner.

But the movie never answers the question, what is this affair all about? Lane is depicted as a woman with a very nice life. She has money and security. Her husband is handsome, successful, attentive to her and a great dad. Connie herself does not seem unhappy.

We never learn why she is willing to risk everything. Diane Lane's character remains an enigma throughout the film.

In the late seventies, a French film, called "After Sex" in America, dealt with the same topic. But there, actress/director Brigette Rouan at least gave us a hint as to why she strayed from a good marriage. It was because she saw the handwriting on the wall, or rather in the mirror. She was getting older and soon, the chances for finding an exciting romance would be few and far between. She needed that kind of excitement in her life, if only one last time.

That may be Lane's motivation, too, but if so, it doesn't really wash. The film goes to no small lengths to prove to us that Lane herself is drop dead gorgeous. That wind in the beginning practically tears her skirt off her, giving us the best shot of a pair of great gams since Rita Hayworth. She must have had many other opportunities, and she might have them for another ten years to come. She is that handsome of a woman. And Martinez doesn't exactly go out of his way to court her. She comes to him, over and over again, so it is not the thrill of just getting some attention.

American movies often skip over the motivation part to get to the action part, and that is what director Lyne seems to have done, perhaps afraid that showing motivation would make his film too intellectual.

But I kept wanting Lane to spill the beans to somebody about why she was doing all this. Publicity accompanying this film has indicated Lane is supposed to be having the best sex of her life. Maybe true, but press releases don't count. You're supposed to put the story up there on the screen. Maybe we were just supposed to get it --that she liked having orgasms. Ok, but there's no reason to believe she wasn't having them with her husband.

In the end, I get the feeling logic and motivation took a back seat to gee whiz movie making here. Getting a chance to watch Diane Lane get her panties ripped off her, then turn around and bend over to receive her lover was supposed to make us forget that not many women with as much to lose as she had would have done that in the hallway of an apartment building. Not many would have had hot sex in a bathroom stall in a restaurant, while her two girlfriends were waiting for her at the table.

Was it the thrill? The danger? If so, why did she want danger?

In the end, this was movie making that went for the cheap thrill over solid plotting, which makes the highly ambiguous, art house ending all that much harder to understand. This was movie making that could have said a lot more, but chose to follow the Hollywood formula instead. I can give this only a tepid endorsement.

"Pepe Le Moko" is an early film noir, coming several decades before the French themselves invented the term to explain atmospheric American crime films. And it is one of the best, a film ranking right up there with the work of Melville, Becker, and other top post war directors.

This is being billed in the US now as a sort of lost film. Actually, it wasn't lost. Hollywood simply bought the rights and kept it off American movie screens so it could release its own remake of it in 1938, retitled "Algiers." That wasn't a half bad film, made enjoyable for the most part because it was a very off-beat story, had great atmosphere and featured the breathtakingly beautiful Hedy Lamarr in the role of Gaby.

At first, when looking at this French original, you wonder why it seems so familiar. Then you realize that the Hollywood version is almost a shot for shot remake, copying almost everything. Everything, that is, but the performance of Jean Gabin.

Hollywood's version, which stared Charles Boyer, always seemed a little contrived, primarily because Boyer was just not very convincing as the tough Paris gangster who pulls a bank heist and flees to Algiers, where he takes up permanent residence in the Arab quarter, the Casbah. Boyer just didn't seem like the gangster type.

Gabin, who had played rough characters before and would go on to play many others, is perfect as the smart, charismatic, but sometimes brutal Pepe.

It is ironic that the French, so in love with gangster films that they copied American cops and robbers films of the 30s, actually made one of their own in that era that wound up being copied by the Americans.

This one is well worth seeing.

Peter Bogdanovich's latest, "The Cat's Meow," is a fun period piece that works on some levels, but fails on others.

If you know very little about the period or the real life people involved, it's great. It is well written, well directed, well paced and almost uniformly well acted. It deals with a real life incident in 1924 that occured aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht which cost the life of early silent film producer/director Thomas Ince. The whole movie takes place aboard the yacht, so Bogdanovich got "A" picture production values on what was probably a "B" picture budget and his money was well spent, almost exclusively on the actors. None of them really fail him, in my view.

So this comes off as a sort of "Gosford Park" in America, including the murder mystery. It's not as well acted as Altman's film, but its close.

So where are the problems? For the most part, you won't find them, unless you know much about the people involved. First, there's the casting. Kirsten Dunst plays Heart's long time mistress Marion Davies. The problem is, Dunst is 19, playing a woman who was atleast 27. Joanna Lumley plays British novelist turned screenwriter Elinor Glyn. Lumely must be in her 30s. Glyn was 60 at the time. Both give good performances, though, especially Dunst, who is extremely charming.

But then there is Eddie Izzard as silent screen legend Charlie Chaplin. In my book, Izzard fails to capture much of the charm or cleaverness that made Chaplin such a hit, with both audiences and with women. He plays Chaplin like Robert Downey Junior -- on drugs.

Then there's Hearst, played by the fine character actor Edward Herrmann. The intent here appears to have been NOT to portray Hearst as Orson Wells portrayed him in "Citizen Kane." But what Herrmann's Hearst comes off like is a kind of simp, a wildly erratic man who seems more like a manic depressive (big highs and big lows) than the absolute ruler of what at the time was the world's largest media empire.

While I believe Hearst had an unusually high voice for a man, I don't think there was any evidence that he was the weak sister he comes off as in this film.

Finally, there's the concept that Marion Davis was not only cheating on Hearst with Chaplin, but apparently willing to do it almost openly, publicly humiliating the newspaper tycoon in front of his own guests.

I think that flies in the face of most of what we know about Davies, who was no great shakes as an actress, but certainly no dummy. She would not have been willing to risk everything she had for a roll in the hay with Chaplin, a man who loved 'em and left 'em with regularity.

But, assuming viewers know none of this to begin with, the picture works just fine and is really quite enjoyable. It ends a little flat, and perhaps needed a little more drama there, but other than that, you can have fun with it. Just don't expect too much historial accuracy, if that's your thing.